How big does it take?

Everybody knows Twitter and Facebook are big deals. Like Google before them, they have themselves inspired a new wave of startups aiming to be the next big thing.

But how big do you need to get to truly be a home run? This is something I think very few people have a good grasp of (and one reason so many people think social networks are the “easy way” to money). Granted, if you have the right business model, you might not need to hit quite the same heights as a Twitter or a Facebook, but even the right business model doesn’t change the fact that you’ve got to be big to have the type of influence and IPO/M&A potential that the true giants have.

So how big? We’re talking at least three million users (FourSquare) if you’ve got a PR engine and potentially ultra-disruptive modelbut more likely you need more than fifty million users! (Thanks to this infographic I pulled from GigaOm which itself came from digital agency Jess3)